


Years Since I've Last Seen You

by ossapher



Series: The Macaroniverse -- Lams Modern AU [6]
Category: American Revolution RPF
Genre: Gen, Modern AU, discussion of death of a parent, discussion of death of a sibling, lowkey emotional hurt/comfort, pre-Lams, somewhere between fluff and angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 04:24:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5652364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ossapher/pseuds/ossapher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander Hamilton has just one photograph of his family left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Years Since I've Last Seen You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spikenard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spikenard/gifts).



> Tumblr user ackamarackuss/ [insipidity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/insipidity/pseuds/insipidity) requested a modern AU drabble on the word "forget." I succumbed to my tendency to occasionally turn drabbles into full-on fic. I imagine that this took place about a month after Alex and John started splitting an apartment, so they don’t know one another super well at this point (yet). They both seem like the types to have pretty high emotional walls, so this is the stage where they're starting to guardedly lower them around each other.
> 
> Title is from the folk song "Shenendoah."

Alex still remembers the day his mom got the photo printed. He was so small he couldn’t see over the counter of the Kodak kiosk at Target. In the back of the car on the way home he handled the 3x5s carefully, with their stiff, glossy paper and strange chemical smell of ink. Now he only has one picture, and it’s faded, creased with white lines where he’s had to fold it up.There’s the Christmas tree in the background, him and Jim on the floor surrounded by wrapping paper (now he thinks with a pang that his parents probably went hungry for those presents), his mom, mid-laugh, pointing at his dad, who is slightly blurred– Alex remembers how he ran to beat the timer, how he leaped cackling into the frame.

Kids in college would put up pictures of their families in their dorm rooms, sometimes whole collages, but Alex never put this on display. It feels too personal. Sometimes he opens up his wallet and takes in every little detail of his mom’s shining face. Sometimes he goes months without looking at it.

John doesn’t put up family pictures when they start rooming together. Oh, sure, he’s got some of his friends, mostly taken in various European locations: skiing in the Alps, fooling around in front of the Parthenon. Some posters, a giant American flag that Alex can’t tell is ironic or not. But Alex his honestly surprised when he pops his head into John’s room one morning to ask about groceries and sees him on his laptop, looking at a picture of what is obviously his family.

John jumps and makes an aborted movement that might have been an attempt to slam the laptop shut.

“Sorry,” Alex says at once. “I shouldn’t have barged in.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” John says. He gestures at the picture: stiff, formal, a white-bread family Christmas photo. “Just… reminiscing.”

“That’s you?” Alex says, pointing.

John grimaces. “Yeah.”

“You look…”

“Like a tool?”

It’s true, younger John does have a bit of a future corporate executive look about him. Blue button-down, carefully-slicked hair, khakis. “I was going to say unhappy.”

John laughs. “Oh, I was. I didn’t know how good I had it.” His voice grows softer, and he looks at the picture rather than Alex. “A couple weeks after this was taken my mom and my little brother died in a car crash, so…”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah, that… that wasn’t a great time. Sorry to be such a fucking downer, I just…”

On impulse, Alex pulls out his wallet and plucks out the photo, showing it to John. “That’s my mom, she died. That’s my dad, he fucking left and he’s probably dead now, although I’m not really sure. That’s my big brother, he lives in Fresno. And that adorable little child is me.”

“Shit,” John says. “I’m never feeling sorry for myself again.”

“No, that’s… that’s not what I meant. Like, maybe my tragedy dick is bigger than yours, maybe it isn’t, I don’t know, a sibling versus a parent, I don’t think we should be, like, tallying shit up here because I’m not trying to… to like, devalue what you’ve gone through, you know? I just want you to know that you don’t have to feel like you have to hide that stuff from me, or feel bad if you’re feeling sad about it. Because I know what it feels like to… to have to stare and stare at one picture of your mom praying you’ll never forget her face or how she smelled or, or the way her voice sounded when she got you out of bed in the morning for school or…” Alex stops because his voice is getting hoarse.

“It fucking sucks,” John says, and graciously looks at his computer screen for a moment while Alex gets a hold of himself. After, he says, “Hey, Alex, I don’t mean to pry, but… you said ‘one picture’ and I was just wondering… is that your only one?”

“Yeah,” Alex says, “my brother’s got a few more, but… we never had very many.”

“It’s getting kind of–-I mean, clearly you’ve had it for a while… maybe I could scan it in and Photoshop it? You know, get rid of the crease, restore the colors kinda thing?”

Alex looks at him in astonishment. “You–- you’d do that?” he stammers.

“Yeah, of course,” John says. “Why wouldn’t I?”

That afternoon John prints him ten copies of the restored version on photo paper in various sizes. Alex goes out to CVS and returns with a frame. He realizes that John has the capacity to print and frame his own pictures, and clearly hasn’t, which signifies that something’s probably up there. He won’t pick at that–-John seems like a private guy–-but putting up his own happy family photo in a common area seems obscurely like gloating, no matter how things fell apart after it was taken. Instead, he sets it on top of his dresser, and falls asleep that night with his mother smiling over him.


End file.
